Software Maintenance
Reducing the cost of software maintenance is the most often cited reason for following coding conventions. In their introduction to code conventions for the Java Programming Language, Sun Microsystems provides the following rationale:
Code conventions are important to programmers for a number of reasons:
- 40%-80% of the lifetime cost of a piece of software goes to maintenance.
- Hardly any software is maintained for its whole life by the original author.
- Code conventions improve the readability of the software, allowing engineers to understand new code more quickly and thoroughly.
- If you ship your source code as a product, you need to make sure it is as well packaged and clean as any other product you create.
Read more about this topic: Coding Conventions
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